Published in the August 2009 Issue of DJ Times Magazine
Volume 22 - Number 08
By Justin Hampton

Collaborations between electronic-music producers are a common thing. But whenever Diplo decides to globalize an under-served musical style, there’s bound to be talk, especially when partnering again with fidget-house pioneer Switch.

Fresh from a Grammy-nominated smash (M.I.A.’s “Paper Planes”) that drew world attention, the studio duo has formed the dancehall-meets-kitchen-sink act Major Lazer, and the result is typically left-field. If nothing else, genre aficionados should certainly brace themselves for the scattershot sonic attack of Gunz Don’t Kill People... Lazers Do [Mad Decent/Downtown]. In this anything-goes wonderworld, Jamaican microphone mainstays like Vybz Kartel and Mr. Lexx rub elbows with surf music bits, an Auto-Tuned baby cry and the bassline to Black Flag’s punk anthem, “Six Pack.”

“A lot of people didn’t really know what [Diplo and I] were about,” says Switch (aka Dave Taylor). “But I think once the artists started to hear the music, they started to go, ‘OK, cool, I like this beat, and I can do this style of thing on it.’”

Despite the near-otherworldly sounds of the CD, both Switch and Diplo (aka Wes Pentz) say the majority of the material was concocted solely on their laptops. Switch worked Logic and its internal synths, such as the ES2, while Diplo mainly used Ableton Live. “It reminds me a lot of Cool Edit Pro,” says Diplo of Live, “which is what I learned to make music on.”

After an initial preproduction phase in North London, the duo moved its base to the legendary Tuff Gong Studios in Kingston, Jamaica, home of most of the album’s vocal talent. While there, Switch and Diplo took advantage of the studio’s special features, which were once used by Bob Marley and The Wailers.

“The main goal [working at] Tuff Gong was good, clean, professionally recorded material,” says Switch, “and then, once we had some extra spare time, they had a huge array of outboard compressors that is probably unique to that studio. So we ran some stuff through that.”

Major Lazer has also adopted a less-is-more approach to their live show. Aside from a dancer and whatever MCs they can pull in, the pair employs a basic DJ setup: Pioneer DJM-800 mixer; two Pioneer CDJ-1000s; a Serato laptop playing samples and loops; and a main controller with another sampler “to drop little bombs and stuff around,” according to Diplo.

No doubt, Diplo and Switch will probably add more to the show as time goes on, as they plan to continue their work under the Major Lazer name. The next project, they say, will include Ms. Thing, a vocal contributor to a pair of frenetic Gunz tunes (“When You Hear the Bassline” and “Bruk Out”).

“We’re just gonna show her what we do,” says Diplo. “We do everything from ghetto-tech to house to crunk to reggae. We’re just the guys who know how to work all the angles, so she’s a perfect example of what we’d give Major Lazer beats to.”

– Justin Hampton